The proof is in the peanut butter

We have seen the seeds of a cultural war on science in this country, and according to this Reuters article, it is spreading to France. In that country, biology teachers are under pressure not only from biblical fundamentalists, but Muslim fundamentalists as well, for teaching evolution.

What we have — sadly, and unnecessarily — is an emerging war between science and religion. Some of the religious backlash has undoubtedly been prompted by the popularity of folks like Richard Dawkins who have made scathing intellectual attacks on organized religion. But let’s face it, those who read the Bible literally have always been uncomfortable with things like evolution and an Earth that’s older than 5,000 years.

What’s unfortunate, and what’s happening as the debate becomes polarized, is the commonality of attacks on the middle ground, where there should be plenty of room for all. And what is that common ground? Scientists can only guess at the probable biological mechanism — abiogenesis — that sparked life to begin. They cannot say who or what caused the spark, nor why; or why a universe exists in which these events can unfold. Here is where science ends and religion begins.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough for fundamentalists who dishonestly equate abiogenesis with evolution, and, as always, want to tear down the work of Charles Darwin with hollow rhetorical weapons. This time the blunt instrument is peanut butter:

This is laughable, of course. It’s about as valid a scientific argument as an atheist showing movies of children dying during a war as proof that God does not exist.

What scares me is that such videos, or related ones, might find their way into science classrooms, be it in the United States, France or elsewhere. I don’t want the likes of Chuck Missler teaching my kids about science. By the way, Chuck, if abiogenesis did occur in your jar of peanut butter it would probably be too small for you to notice.

Below are the results of years of ruminating on science and religion. Hopefully it is not too long for this blog.

Having been raised in fundamentalism but having intellectual curiosity and a scientific bent, as well as being weaned on the science fiction of Robert Heinlein, with all its cultural explorations, I have given much thought to religious, philosophical, ethical, and scientific issues for many years, starting when I was quite young, when I tried to reconcile evolution and Genesis but eventually was forced to give it up as a lost cause as the facts supporting evolution piled up.

I am not religious, an agnostic and an atheist for practical purposes (I cannot pretend to prove there are no deities, so I cannot technically be an atheist, but my gut feeling is that there are no supernatural beings; nor can I prove there are any deities, so I cannot be a theist, either).

I do not like the concept of religion in general, where one is supposed to accept the words of some prelate or some old holy book, regardless of common sense or any evidence to the contrary, or simply sheer lack of evidence. It seems to promote non-rationality and a herd mentality, which are unhealthy in a democracy.

However, that being said, I have lots of religious friends of various stripes, and frankly, as long as they do not try to convert me, I really do not care what they believe, no matter how silly I might consider some of it to be.

Basically, I believe in live and let live. Or as Mao I think supposedly once said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom!” (though his actions belied this).

As far as an emerging war between science and religion, this is unfortunately not new. Remember the Scopes trial? Religious leaders have been bashing scientists and nonbelievers as long as I have been alive (now nearly 55 years) and long before. Having been raised in a Southern Baptist church in West Texas, I can recall many times the preachers attacking atheists, agnostics, people of other religions, and so on. They used to love to attack the noted atheist, philosopher, mathematician, pacifist, socialist, and writer Bertrand Russell. Of course, Bertie had more brains in his little finger than a seminary full of theologians or a super church full of preachers; hearing those intellectual featherweights trying to trash him was just laughable.

Anyway, religionists attacking scientists or anybody else they disagree with is not new. What is perhaps new is that some scientists and/or nonbelievers, like Richard Dawkins, have attacked back, which I think is just fine. If the creationists and the like don’t like the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If they want to be treated civilly, they should try to be civil (and actually obey the Golden Rule for a change). Dawkins, by the way, is a brilliant scientist and a great writer (I have been reading his books for many years).

By the way, this attacking of science is not restricted to Christianity, or even Islam as well. Some years ago I was passing through the Vegas airport and got a book palmed off on me for a $5 donation. It was called “Life Comes From Life”, or something like that, by one Swami Prabhupada, I think. He was a Krishna Consciousness guy or some such, and in the book, he lambasted western materialist scientists and Christianity as well. He was opposed to evolution, since he did not believe that life could initially come from non-life. All in all, despite the different religious viewpoint, it sounded like I had heard it all before (deja vu all over again).

But I think religion and science should, at least theoretically, be able to get along.

The important parts of religions are the moral and ethical precepts, not any factual claims made in any of their holy scriptures, which may of course happen to be contrary to actual scientific fact. Science per se is about facts, not what to do with them; it offers no moral or ethical directives on how to properly use any scientific facts uncovered. Science has discovered atomic power but offers no suggestions on how to use it wisely or safely, or whether to use it at all.

If science and religion could just make this dichotomy, they could get along; let science uncover the facts, and let religions/philosophies wrangle about how to wisely make use of these facts.

But of course, some religious factual claims may have moral or ethical implications.

In the case of evolution, some religionists argue against it because it would imply man is perfectible, which would mean he eventually might not need God.

There are several problems with this. First is a major misunderstanding of evolution.

Evolution is not about perfection; indeed there is no reasonable definition of what perfection in an organism might be, except maybe being unkillable, which is almost certainly impossible. Evolution is about survival of genetic material. There are more bacteria and viruses in the world than any other organisms; they have been here longest and will likely outsurvive any other form of life on earth, even a major meteor strike or nuclear war; there are bacteria adapted to live in rocks miles below the earth’s surface; they are probably nearer genetic perfection than any human descendant will ever be, from the point of view of survivability.

Another problem is the notion an idea must be rejected if you personally do not like the implications. Since when does the universe care what any of us thinks? No matter how revolting or disgusting or abhorrent we might find a particular idea to be, that has no necessary bearing on its truth or falsity. There is no inherent reason to believe evolution is politically correct, or supportive of any other human dogma.

Finally, assuming there is a Deity that created the world and all therein, there is no reason to believe She might not have used the process of evolution to generate all life. And if that did imply that us hairless apes might eventually evolve to the point we no longer needed Her, well, then, maybe that was the Divine plan, so She could spend more time caring for the creatures who still needed Her. Who are we to question Divine wisdom (to use the reasoning of the religionists)?

Another reason some (though by no means all) Christians oppose evolution is that it seemingly takes away God’s control of the universe, leaving only random chance, which they find abhorrent (see above). Or it seems to lead to determinism, with everything subject to natural law, again giving God no room to control the world (though I have met a few actual Calvinists, who are fully predestinarian and hence deterministic).

But given the apparent randomness seemingly inherent in quantum mechanics (I say “seemingly” because the equations themselves are completely deterministic), that could give God the chance to “roll the dice” (to borrow from Einstein), to subtly influence the course of events by choosing the particular random events that would lead to conclusions He desired. Thus He could guide evolution to lead to us (or perhaps creatures like us). Not that I really believe this, but I can see no way to show it is not so, and it could give believers a way to reconcile evolution with religion. Noted physicist Roger Penrose attempted to use quantum mechanics in a similar way to justify free will several years ago.

The idea of God manifesting Himself in quantum uncertainty would require a God of more subtlety than most people are used to, but surely this is not unreasonable to expect of the Ruler and Shaper of All the Universes (to quote Heinlein, who correctly noted that most gods are altogether too human, having the “manners and morals of a spoiled child”).

A lot of Christians dislike evolution because it contradicts the creation stories (there is more than one) in Genesis. But the fact is that almost all ancient cultures had their own creation myths, and the Genesis account is clearly just one more such collection, with clear borrowings from the creation myths of the Babylonians and others in the area of ancient Palestine. Of course, it is easy to see the creation myths of others as being myths, but it harder to see our own that way (though truthfully, for most of us, “our” religious myths should stem from Thor or Jupiter or the druids, not Yahweh).

But though the Genesis account is obviously mythical, if viewed more symbolically or allegorically (which fundamentalists are loathe to do), it actually describes the appearance of life on Earth better than any other creation myth I know of, which surely should count for something with the fundamentalists.

In it, God first had grasses and trees grow, and then fish in the sea and fowl in the air, and then animals that walked and creeped, and finally man.

This is roughly how things did happen, probably sea plants and sea animals (like fish) first, then the creeping things (like snakes and reptiles and amphibians), then the walking things (like cattle) and the flying things (like birds), then the primates (like us). The flying things are a bit out of chronological order in the Biblical account, coming much later than the sea creatures, but that can be taken as poetic license, since fish swimming in the sea with fins and birds flying in the air with wings are metaphorically similar.

But the fact is that the mere belief in a deity does not require that this being assert active control over the universe. A lot of religionists in this country love to point to the founders of this country as being religious, and many of them were, but many were in fact Deists, who basically believed in a God who set the universe up and then left it alone to work itself out through the natural laws He set up. Indeed, many scientists in the world today seem to believe in a Deity of this sort, which is in no way incompatible with science, and particularly not with evolution. If more people believed in a God of this sort, there would be much less difficulty between religion and science.

But this gets to the root of much of the problem with science and religion, because most religionists want God to be in active control of the universe; perhaps unconsciously, they use God as their way to try to control an otherwise uncontrollable universe. And so the idea of no God, or an impersonal God that does not intervene in human affairs, is very frightening to them. And this is probably one reason that religion and science will continue to be in conflict indefinitely, even though there is no theoretical reason for it.

This desire for control even results in some very un-Christian theology in some supposedly Christian churches, many of which preach the “gospel of wealth”, which says that God wants you to be wealthy, and that by believing properly (and often, donating properly), you can be.

I went to Sunday School as a kid, was an adept learner, learned much of the Bible; I did not come to believe it all, but I knew what it said nonetheless, probably more so than most Christians (which is probably a major reason I am not a Christian, because I do know what the Bible really says).

But anyway, the Jesus described in the Gospels was no fan or wealth or rich people. He supposedly said (I say “supposedly” because I have no idea how accurately the Gospels report what he really said) that you cannot serve both God and Mammon (wealth, or money, or things). He wasn’t speaking allegorically.

Or how about, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Take that literally, Mr. Fundamentalist, and it says there ain’t NO rich guys in heaven.

Of course, in order to open the gates of heaven to the wealthy (and church coffers to their wealth), theologians have gone through all sorts of contortions and gyrations and mental gymnastics to try to rationalize this last passage. There is one very dubious idea that there was a low gate in the wall of Jerusalem called the “Eye of the Needle”, which a camel really could go through with some difficulty, if it got down low enough. This idea causes my BS detector to wail uncontrollably.

A very smart friend of mine once said he had read that in Hebrew the words for camel and rope have the same consonants, which could be interpreted as either word, since ancient Hebrew had no vowel markings, suggesting “rope” had been mistranslated as “camel” in the New Testament. I have no idea if this is in fact correct (since the passage may have been in Greek or Aramaic rather than Hebrew originally – I can’t remember), but if so, it would actually make more sense, to say “It is easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle, …”; “rope” and “needle” go together better than “camel” and “needle”. But it would still say no rich man was ever getting into heaven.

My suspicion is that both science and religion originated in the same impulse in our early ancestors thousands of years ago, when both were effectively the same. Imagine one of our early ancestors cowering in the cold rain in a tree on the African savannah, terrified of the lightning bolts and cracks of thunder, and never knowing when some mighty paw or maw might gape out of the darkness and drag him off for dinner. Having a brain capable of thought, he or she wanted to find some way to understand and control these mighty forces to which he or she was unwillingly subject. And so both science and religion were born.

The early religious impulses were not unreasonable, given the knowledge available at the time (i.e., next to none). The early human could see that humans had some small power to do things, so why not assume other things could as well, not only animals, but perhaps trees and bushes, clouds, rivers, oceans, volcanoes, rain, lightning, the sun, the moon, the stars, and so on, especially things that could move or change to some degree or other.

And so, perhaps by communicating with (praying to) them, and perhaps by making pleasant gifts (offerings or sacrifices), one could get them to do what you wanted them to do (like rain at a particular time, or not flood, etc.), thus giving the prayer or offerer some small measure of control over an otherwise mysterious and frequently hostile universe. And since sometimes the desired results did happen after such a prayer or offering, some sets of such beliefs got reinforced and eventually became codified.

But this is probably where science and religion parted ways, because some people probably noted that although these prayers and offerings sometimes seemed to work, many times they did not, and they had to wonder why, and look for other explanations that worked better; these were the first true scientists, whose implicit rule was, “Does this belief match reality?”.

Whereas the prayers and offerings probably came to be the province of certain “experts”, or shamans, who had exotic knowledge others might not possess. And this brought the shamans power and material bounty, by insuring the tribe had good hunting, good planting, good harvesting, and so on. But this also meant the shamans typically would not be interested in ideas contrary to their own, because their religious ideas were the source of their power, and admitting their ideas might not be entirely correct would lessen their influence among the masses. And because there were obvious questions, all the more important that the believers be taught never to question, to help maintain the shamans’ power.

And, sad to say, I fear that this motivates much of the hostility to science (and other things) found in religion today, because the preachers or priests or pastors or pontiffs or mullahs or ayatollahs or whatever fear that admitting the fallibility of their holy scriptures will open the flood gates that will wash away their power over their flocks.

So science and religion probably split when the former began to insist on reality checks, while the latter insisted dogma could not be questioned. So science, by being willing to look at the real world (my motto: “Look at the world – if you would understand any worldly phenomenon”), has continually uncovered new and interesting and weird and useful ideas. But religions (at least once they are founded) never seem to come up with anything new. And why not, since they are already in the possession of all truth, or at least all that matters? Could a religion ever come up with such a useful or counter-intuitive concept as quantum mechanics or general relativity? I doubt it.

Much of the hostility between science and religion seems to originate with religious fundamentalism, which has been on the upswing worldwide for a number of years. This upswing is not really surprising, since the modern world is complex and full of difficult problems, people want solutions, and fundamentalism offers easy (purported) solutions. Unfortunately, their solutions do not seem to work any better than anybody else’s.

This rise in fundamentalism is not confined to any particular religion. Along with our own home grown Christian fundamentalists, there are the Moslem fundamentalists (like Al Qaida), Jewish fundamentalists (like the settlers in Palestinian territory), Hindu fundamentalists (who murdered Gandhi), and so on.

The tenacity of fundamentalist ideas seems to be well explained by an idea from one of Richard Dawkins’ early books about the selfish gene. He propounded the idea that evolution is concerned primarily with the survival of genetic material; individuals of a species, such as ourselves, are important only as temporary custodians of our genes, until we can pass them on to descendants. The genes themselves evolve so as to be good at getting themselves passed on via individuals of a species, and all else is just window dressing.

In analogy to the concept of a gene as a unit of physical material that is good at getting itself passed on, Dawkins came up with the idea of a “meme”, which he defined to be an idea that is good at getting itself passed on. All that matters about a gene (from the point of view of survival) is that it gets itself passed on, and the same is true of memes.

The fact that a particular meme may represent a truly obnoxious idea (such as many forms of fundamentalism) is irrelevant from the point of view of the meme, which is only surviving. The meme has just evolved over time to get better at propagating itself, just like genes.

Whatever pain or damage the meme may cause its human hosts that transmit it to other human hosts does not matter any more to the meme than the pain or damage a gene may cause to its individual hosts that pass it on. For example, our genes determine our overall mating habits, which lead to the genes being passed on, but also lead to all manner of human unhappiness, divorces, broken hearts, spousal abuse and murders, and more. And similarly with many memes.

Fundamentalism seems to have traits that cause it to survive, regardless of the intrinsic virtue (or lack thereof) of its major tenets. Fortunately, science also seems to be a meme with high survivability. And just as many sets of genes coexist in nature while their individual hosts may do battle with each other (like the genes of wolves and of rabbits), so the memes of science and religious fundamentalism may continue to coexist for a long time while their hosts continue to joust.

You keep accusing everybody of a whole list of horrible rude actions yet the only thing you are showing is that when it comes to religion you are all of those things you accuse others of. You have no respect for a “godless” worldview. Covering this up in a lot of philosophy and verbal attacks is really not fooling anyone.

TTtom is a “product” of the religious meme. Religion is simply a cultural evolution that fills a desperate need in mankind’s genetics. With our huge brains and being at the top of the food chain, it is difficult to accept the finality of death. Therefor religious leaders lead the ever hopefull with the promise of everlasting life. The leaders become so wealthy and self rightious they actually (some) start believing they talk to god.

Are you trying to say that the high standards you yourself obviously live up to as an intellectual also lead you to pass judgment on all those who are atheist based on what I post here? If I realized my responsibilities I would probably have been quacking in my boots.

Anyway, defining my as dogmatic just shows that you either haven’t read anything I posted or don’t understand how science operates. It is the opposite of dogmatic. If there is no evidence, you have to throw things out. If a better fitting theory is articulated you have to change your views. Science is great, it is based on evidence and standards.

Your standard reply to any post by virtually anybody is to state that they don’t get it, that you mean something different and “that wasn’t even what I was talking about”. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you have some great wisdom but you need to write it down in english so us stupid people can understand the higher spiritual stuff…..

Us atheists have always had to deal with religion telling us how wrong we are in everything and that we are bad people. Now with the great invention of the internet and blogs especially the religious are all of a sudden confronted with atheists and other ways of thinking and having a hard time. Better get used to it. Throwing mud is not a convincing tactic.